Footloose - Wetland Politics (January 2008)

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A flood of lies and propaganda cover the governments plan for wetlands along the Murray.

It seems the days of camping, horseriding, taking your dog and enjoying four wheel drive touring are going to be severely limited along the complete length of the Murray River in Victoria.

The VEAC (Victorian Environment Assessment Council) is a body appointed by government to provide so-claimed ‘independent’ advise to the government on matters relating to the protection and ecologically sustainable management of Victoria’s public lands, and its latest report is a bombshell.

Tabled in parliament the report recommends a number of wide ranging measures that if implemented will see much of the Murray River area closed off to family camping, no access to four wheelers, horse riding banned, dogs barred, no firewood or wood fires allowed, cattle leases suspended and forestry operations (what remains anyway after serious cutbacks a few years ago) cut by another 60%.

Hunting in some 23 Game Reserves, many originally bought by hunters ages ago to help protect areas that were important to birdlife and which has sustained wildlife for years before it became fashionable to be Green, will be banned completely.

Some 1500km of waterfront will be affected while the estimates of costs to the surrounding communities from Albury to the SA border could be in excess of $200 million/annum. And don’t tell me there will be procedures put in place to sustain them and the job losses that occur – check out what’s happened around Colac when forestry operations were stopped in the nearby Otways.

In the meantime Aboriginal people are to get exclusive rights to access so they can carry out their ‘traditional’ lifestyles, ie, hunt (with rifles if they want), fish (with outboard powered boats and nylon fishing lines) and go camping – with their four wheel drive and using the latest gadgets I’m sure.

The whole bloody deal stinks!

Of course the government goes on about how they support the 4WD movement (see www.fwdvictoria.org.au/news.htm ) but in reality they feeding us with the one hand (trying to get our vote) and stabbing us in the back with the other! Meanwhile the VEAC hide behind ‘community input’ and spruik on about how they have had nine community forums and face to face meetings, etc (see www.veac.vic.gov.au/riverredgum.htm for their propaganda). But it seems to me that in a replay of the Wombat Forest debacle they only had their ‘forums’ with select groups in the community and only met ‘face to face’ with those they wanted to.

And it will be interesting to see what info they take on board from the ‘around 6900’ submissions they received. If the Wombat Forest situation is any indication some groups got to know about the submissions well beforehand and had time to react to them while other groups such as the four wheel drivers and the assorted hunting and fishing organizations seemed to only hear about it with a very limited time before submissions closed. And, from my experience on government advisory committees, they will only take into account what supports their plans and what they want to do anyway!

Very handy that!

Then there is the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA). The VNPA has a campaign running in the effected communities, supporting the VEAC recommendations, but don’t be fooled by these zealots. They want national parks at any cost (which we end up paying for), while their preferred option, as one said to me a few years back was to ‘return national parks to what is was like before 1788’.

They are not alone in their desires – see the nutters who want to turn half the American continent into wildlands at Wildlands Project Revealed. We have other similar radical groups here – see the Colong Foundation’s website www.colongwilderness.org.au. What gets me though is that they seem to have the ear of government and people high up in the relevant environment departments.

We’ve got to fight these plans and make the VEAC more accountable and less bloody arrogant about what and how they do things which affect us – the people who pay them!

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